French Film Theory and Criticism, Volume 2: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939. Volume 2: 1929-1939 9781400828395

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French Film Theory and Criticism VOLUME II: 1929-1939

FRENCH FILM THEORY A N D CRITICISM A HISTORY/ANTHOLOGY

1907-1939 *? RichardAbel

Volume II: 1929-1939 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS / PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

COPYRIGHT © I 9 8 8 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey < In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book ISBN 0 - 6 9 1 - 0 5 5 1 8 - 1 ISBN 0—691—00063—8 (pbk.) Publication of this book has been aided by the Paul Mellon Fund of Princeton University Press This book has been composed in Linotron Garamond type Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources First Princeton Paperback printing, 1993 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4

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Printed in the United States of America

A Barbara, encore unefois

Eeyore turned and walked slowly down the stream for twenty yards, splashed across it, and walked slowly back on the other side. Then he looked at himself in the water again. "As I thought," he said. "No better from this side." A. A. Milne, Winnie-tbe-Pooh, 1926

Contents Note on Notes, x

Preface, xiii

Acknowledgments, xxv

PART ONE: 1929—1934 The Transition to Sound

5

Selected Texts

38

Jacques Feyder, "The Possibilities of a Broadened Art" (1929), 38 Rene Clair, "Talkie versus Talkie" (1929), 39 Abel Gance, "Images of Yesterday, Voices of Tomorrow" (1930), 41 Jean Dreville, "Documentary: The Soul of Cinema" (1930), 42 Benjamin Fondane, "From Silent to Talkie: The Rise and Fall of the Cinema" (1930), 45 Marcel Pagnol, "The Talkie Offers the Writer New Resources" (1930), 55 Rene Clair, "Film Authors Don't Need You" (1930), 57 Jean Vigo, "Toward a Social Cinema" (1930), 60 Jean Epstein, "The Cinema Continues" (1930), 63 Jean-Paul Dreyfus, "L'Age d'or" (1930), 68 Georges Altman, "Censorship in France: L'Age d'or" (1931), 71 Rene Clair, "Le Million" (1931), 73 Philippe Soupault, "Jean de la Lune or Cinema on the Wrong Track" (1931), 75 Rene Bizet, "Marius and the Popular Spirit" (1931), 77 Joris Ivens, "Reflections on the Avant-Garde Documentary" (1931), 78 Georges Altman, "The Spirit of Film" (1931), 80 Jean-George Auriol, "La Chienne" (1931), 86 Jean Cocteau, "Le Sang d'unpoke" (1932), 89 Paul Reboux, "Les Croix de bois" (1932), 93 Frangois Vinneuil, "Screen of the Week: Les Croix de bois" (1932), 95 Sacha Guitry, "For the Theater and Against the Cinema" (1932), 98 Marcel Came, "Cinema and the World" (1932), 102 Leon Moussinac, "The Condition of International Cinema" (1933), I O J Le Corbusier, "Spirit of Truth" (1933), in Monny de Boully, "A.B.C.D." (1933), 114 Georges Neveux, "The Tunnel 1930—1940" (1933), 117 Antonin Artaud, "The Premature Old Age of the Cinema" (1933), 122 Vll

CONTENTS Jean Renoir, "How I Give Life to My Characters" (1933), 125 Marcel Carne, "When Will the Cinema Go Down into the Street?" (1933), 127 Marcel Pagnol, "Cinematurgy of Paris" (1933), 129 Francois Vinneuil, "Screen of the Week: La Rue sans nom" (1934), 136 Jean Levy, "KingKong" (1934), 137 Valery Jahier, "Angele" (1934), 140 PART TWO: 1934-1939 Culture and Politics: The Popular Front Era

145

Selected Texts

182

Valery Jahier, "Prologue to a Cinema" (1934), 182 Valery Jahier, "L'Atalante" (1934), 186 Valery Jahier, "Toni" (1935), 187 Jean Epstein, Photogenic and the Imponderable (1935), 188 Roger Leenhardt, "More on The Informer and La Bandera" (1935), 193 Roger Leenhardt, "On Opening a School for Spectators" (1935), 194 Francois Vinneuil, "Screen of the Week: La Kermesse heroique" (1935). T95 Roger Leenhardt, "Cinematic Rhythm" (1936), 200 Pietre Bost, "Le Crime de Monsieur Lange" (1936), 205 Maurice Jaubert, "The Cinema: Music" (1936), 206 Jean Renoir, "The Photogenic Golden Calf" (1936), 211 Pierre Bost, "La Vie est a nous" (1936), 212 Louis Chavance, "The Cinema in the Service of the Popular Front" (1936), 213 Jean Cassou, "From Avant-Garde to Popular Art" (1936), 217 Georges Sadoul, "Apropos Several Recent Films" (1936), 218 Georges Sadoul, "The Cinematheque franchise" (1936), 223 Georges Sadoul, "Les Bas-Fonds" (1936), 225 Frangois Vinneuil, "Screen of the Week: The Cinema Awards" (1936), 228 Henri Langlois, "Les Bas-Fonds" (1937), 229 Georges Franju, "Exhibitionism" (1937), 231 Alberto Cavalcanti, "The Neorealist Movement in England" (1937). 233 Georges Sadoul, "La Marseillaise, a Popular Epic" (1938), 238 Francois Vinneuil, "Screen of the Week: La Marseillaise" (1938), 241 Roger Leenhardt, "La Marseillaise" (1938), 245 Claude Aveline, "Films and Milieux" (1938), 246 viii

CONTENTS Henri Jeanson, "Jean Renoir" (1938), 247 Emile Vuillermoz, "A Case of Conscience" (1938), 2jo Georges Sadoul, "Setting and Society" (1938), 23 j Francois Vinneuil, "Screen of the Week: La Bete humaine" (1938), 256 Georges Sadoul, "A Masterpiece of Cinema: La Bete humaine" (1939), 259 Claude Aveline, "Apropos the Prix Louis Delluc" (1939), 262 Georges Altman, "Lejour se live: A pure film noir" (1939), 266 Claude Aveline, "John Ford" (1939), 269 Francois Vinneuil, "Screen of the Week: La Regie du jeu" (1939), 272 Georges Sadoul, "La Regie du jeu" (1939), 276 Index, 281

Note on Notes N O T E S to the preface and each of the introductory essays to the two parts of this book will be found immediately following the preface and the two essays. Notes to the anthology selections follow each text. These notes are mine unless otherwise indicated: those written by the author of the selection are marked Au; those by the other translators are marked T R A N S .

The cinema {is] an amusement for slaves, a pastime for ignoramuses. Georges Duhamel, 1930 I submit that the cinema is a new art form which has its own rules and unique practices, that it cannot be reduced to a form of theater, and that it ought to be as useful to cultural understanding as Greek and philosophy are. Jean-Paul Sartre, 1931 [History] has taken as its primary task, not the interpretation of the document, not the attempt to decide whether it is telling the truth or what is its expressive value, but to work on it from within and to develop it: history now organizes the document, divides it up, distributes it, orders it, arranges it in levels, establishes series, distinguishes between what is relevant and what is not, discovers elements, defines unities, describes relations. The document, then, is no longer for history an inert material through which it tries to reconstitute what men have done or said, the event of which only the trace remains; history is now trying to define within the documentary material itself unities, totalities, series, relations. . . . history is one way in which a society recognizes and develops a mass of documentation with which it is inextricably linked. Michel Foucault, 1969

Preface

T

HE F R E N C H CINEMA of the 1930s presents those of us in Englishspeaking countries with an anomaly—we think we know and yet we actually do not know much about that cinema as a cultural practice. A relatively broad range of work in English does exist that analyzes a well-established canon of films and filmmakers. We can consult at least one historical survey of the feature film production of the period, which draws extensively on major French histories and historical essays.' We have a good number of perceptive, comprehensive studies of individual filmmakers—Jean Renoir, of course, but also Rene Clair and Jean Vigo2—as well as of single films—for instance, Luis Bunuel's L'Age d'or (1930), Jean Cocteau's Le Sang d'unpoke (1932), Jean Benoit-Levy and Marie Epstein's La Maternelle (1933), and Marcel Carne's Lejour se live (1939). 3 We can find rather thorough studies mapping out the aesthetic principles of what has become known as "poetic realism" and detailing the film production associated with the Popular Front. 4 And, most recently, we have the ongoing research of Ginette Vincendeau, which has begun to contest the canonical assumptions of 1930s French cinema and to focus instead on the ideological function of the most popular films and their intertextual relations with other cultural practices specific to France.5 This body of writing, together with the ready availability of several dozen film (or videocasette) prints provides a relatively "thick," if somewhat selective, form of historical knowledge.

When we turn to French discourse on the cinema in the 1930s, however, we face a surprising dearth of material, a kind of blank space or lost continent. Here again we encounter one of those specific instances of a forgotten or, as Michel Foucault would say, "suppressed" knowledge in the history of cinema. This neglect, along with that of even earlier French writing on the cinema, can be ascribed, in part, to the emergence of a dominant critical discourse through Andre Bazin and the Cahiers du cinema critics who followed him after World War II. Almost everything written in France prior to that has been dismissed, as Dudley Andrew claims in the standard textbook on film theory, because it has neither the "solid logic and consistency" nor the "diversity and complexity" of Bazin's influential ideas.6 Only recently has this attitude begun to change—especially in light of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Popular Front—as researchers such as Vincendeau reexamine the French writings of the 1930s to better determine the cinema's social or ideological function at the time. 7 Yet this change has been circumscribed, at least in English, by the limited availa-

PREFACE

bility of primary texts. In scattered books and journals, to be sure, there have been translations of such major figures as Rene Clair, Jacques Feyder, Jean Vigo, Jean Cocteau, Antonin Artaud, and Jean Renoir.8 And Maurice Bardeche and Robert Brasillach's Histoiredu cinema (Denoel, 1935) has long been available in an English translation by Iris Barry of the Museum of Modern Art. 9 The French themselves have collected a good number of texts, although marketed almost exclusively under the rubric of individual filmmakers—Clair, Renoir, Feyder, Epstein, Carne, Marcel Pagnol. 10 And, just recently, they have begun to reprint the work of some of the best critics of the period—Georges Sadoul, Roger Leenhardt, Philippe Soupault. 11 No one book, in either French or English, however, has collected these writings in what amounts to a portable archive for wider dissemination. 12 Demonstrating the value and usefulness of French writing on the cinema in the 1930s, therefore, must coincide with an effort to recover as much of the writing as possible. This book—and its companion volume, French Film Theory and Criticism, 190J-1929—to appropriate the language of Foucault, is conceived, then, as an archaeological project. I3 In this volume I mean to excavate the period from 1929 to 1939 in France and to resurrect the significant texts that intersected with—seeking either to determine or respond to—the historical development of the first decade of sound cinema. To open up a space or "horizon of utterance" for the performance of voices, both recognized and unrecognized, banded together or separate, competing for dominance. To foreground especially those that have long been forgotten or suppressed— not only those linked with the French Communist Party and the Popular Front but those of the French fascists who may once, as Alice Yaeger Kaplan puts it, "have 'needed', in some recuperative sense, to be repressed."14 I also mean to engage in a dialogue with those voices, creating what Linda Gordon has called "a tension between historical empathy and rootedness in one's own present."15 To trace some of the intertextual linkages, for instance, within the structured network of discursive and non-discursive practices in French society (economic, social, political, cultural), out of which French film theory and criticism had emerged and within which it remained partially enmeshed. To question the underlying assumptions or "given conditions" of what had become a relatively autonomous discourse, with its own subject, loosely defined set of methodologies, and often fascinatingly contradictory manner of articulation. Through such a double operation of re-presentation, this book thus offers both a critical map or historical framework for French film theory and criticism in the 1930s as well as site or "archive" for others subsequently to engage with, reimagine, and rewrite.

PREFACE FOR THOSE READERS

coming directly to this volume without having ex-

amined the earlier French Film Theory and Criticism, 1907—1929, let me offer a summary sketch of the four periods into which it is divided in order to better contextualize the French writings on the cinema in the 1930s. From 1907 to 1914, I argue, we encounter something akin to what Foucault has called the initial threshold of a. discursive practice. l6 In conjunction with the transformation of the French film industry into a major new institution of spectacle entertainment, dependent upon the continuous production and exhibition of fiction films, there appeared a number of specialized film journals such as Georges Dureau's Cine-Journal, regular columns devoted to the cinema in daily newspapers like Comoedia and Le Journal, and special articles in such disparate cultural magazines as Mercure de France, La Revue des deux mondes, and Guillaume Apollinaire's Les Soirees de Paris. As might be expected, most of the texts published within this newly emergent public forum addressed only a limited range of the questions—concerning the raw material of cinema, the possible forms of films and their methods of realization, and the value or function of cinema— which Dudley Andrew suggests any theory of cinema worth its salt must address.17 Yet by focusing on such transitional texts in a still unintegrated discursive practice, as Richard Terdiman argues, one can detect more easily the rough "fit of its operation as well as the movements of resistance to it."' 8 In a sense, just as no one text—even those by Georges Melies and Remy de Gourmont in 1907—can be said adequately to mark a point of origin for French film theory and criticism, so too do nearly all these early texts— including those by Ricciotto Canudo, Leopold Survage, and the unknown Yhcam—come to us as combinatoire, as more or less synthesized bits and pieces of other discourses. In other words, writers then tended to act as flaneurs, strolling here and there and cobbling together a variety of idioms and social practices.19 In another sense, however, the cinema can be seen as a site of struggle among different, already established discourse modes according to whether it was defined as an apparatus of scientific or technological innovation, an instrument of education or social persuasion, a new mode of mass entertainment, or a new form of art. And that struggle was complicated by the disruptions it was perceived to cause in those supposedly normative discourses and social practices. From 1915 to 1919, we confront a second threshold in the development of French film theory and criticism as a discursive practice. For the first time, film journals such as Henri Diamant-Berger's Le Film began to call attention to a "crisis" in the material conditions of the French film industry but failed to reach any consensus on a solution to its problems. Instead, the sets of terms articulated before the war, particularly those defining the cinema as a mode of mass entertainment and a new art form, began to settle

PREFACE

in place through various transformations and "hardenings"—with the critics Emile Vuillermoz of Le Temps and Louis Delluc of he Film in the forefront of a further series of struggles. Out of the combinatoire of previous texts, a spectrum of narrative theories emerged—from Diamant-Berger's French version of the American "classical narrative" to either Andre Antoine and Louis Delluc's different concepts of a Realist narrative (which relied on French, American, and Swedish models) or else Marcel L'Herbier and Emile Vuillermoz's concept of a subjective, psychological narrative. At the same time a spectrum of non-narrative positions developed as well— from Delluc's influential notion of photogenie, in which the cinema acted as a transformative, revelatory medium of absorption and de-familiarization, to Vuillermoz's theory of film form as a musical composition and Blaise Cendrars and Marcel Gromaire's conception of film as an exclusively poetic or plastic construction. From this point on, French film theory and criticism was largely occupied with working out the ramifications of this spectrum of positions, the oppositions and contradictions they encompassed, and their interrelation or dialogue with other discourses and cultural practices. Between 1920 and 1924, the French public forum open to writing on the cinema expanded dramatically. Regular film review columns appeared in almost every Paris daily and weekly as well as in such established cultural magazines as Mercure de France, Le Crapouillot, and Theatre et Comoedia il-

lustre. New quasi-independent film journals such as Delluc's Cinea and Jean Pascal's Cinemagazine became influential and were complemented by books like Delluc's Photogenie (1920) and Jean Epstein's Bonjour Cinema (1921) as well as newly organized cine-clubs such as Canudo's Club des Amis du Septieme Art (CASA) and Leon Moussinac's Club franc_ais du cinema. Writers continued to express concern over the critical situation of the French film industry, but economic and political issues, as before, generally were subordinated to aesthetic questions. The former balance between high art and low art positions shifted slightly now as Vuillermoz, Canudo, and Germaine Dulac built up an expressive, subjective theory of Impressionist cinema which gradually overshadowed Delluc and Moussinac's theory of a Realist narrative cinema. Yet both were set off to some extent from the various Modernist conceptions of Elie Faure, Fernand Leger, and Robert Desnos, as well as Jean Epstein's concept of lyrosophy, in which the cinema, as an epistemological instrument, exposed the "grammar" or "logic" of the unconscious or the intangible. Whatever their position, however, the French writers were engaged conscientiously in a search for cinematic specificity, even to the point of isolating uniquely cinematic techniques. The earlier interest in photogenie or the singular transformative nature of the film image gave way to a concern for cinegraphie or the unique rhythmic princixvi

PREFACE

pies that governed the placement, duration, and interrelation of film images. While some writers urged that these rhythmic principles ought to be synthesized in a film, others argued that any one principle could exclusively shape a film's formal system, which implicitly set out the conditions for a kind of "pure cinema." And in this search for specificity, an unspoken opposition to the American cinema now fueled something close to a collective effort to establish distinctly French theories of cinema. Finally, in the years between 1924 and 1929, the French public forum went through another startling period of expansion. This was sparked by a marked increase in the number of books and magazines (see, especially, Cinea-Cine-pour-tous) devoted specifically to the cinema, by newly opened specialized cinemas such as Jean Tedesco's Vieux-Colombier and Armand Tallier's Studio des Ursulines, and by activist cine-clubs such as Moussinac's Cine-Club de France and Charles Leger's Tribune libre du cinema— all of which had come to constitute an alternative structure to the industry in support of a variety of "avant-garde" films. The broad spectrum of some half-dozen theories that had emerged during and just after the Great War now formed a set of polarized factions, each relatively systematic in its thinking, although not necessarily consistent internally, and each having its own heritage or history on which to draw. At one end of the spectrum, Henri Fescourt and Jean-Louis Bouquet wrote the most comprehensive defense of a "classical narrative cinema" since Diamant-Berger. At the other, there were a series of bold attempts to produce a kind of aesthetic revolution in cinematic representation and visual pleasure—for instance, in Pierre Port's "pure cinema" or Dulac's "visual symphony," in Moussinac's polemics for an authentic proletarian or populist film art, in Epstein's explanations of his disquieting experiments in narrative construction and spectator positioning, and in the Surrealists' disruptive transformations of the very process of representation and "reading." Eventually, Moussinac and his colleagues were encouraged enough to use the Soviet cinema as a model in establishing a new cultural institution—the Amis de Spartacus cine-club>—to facilitate (unsuccessfully, it turned out) the coming of a new socioeconomic order in France. French film theory and criticism, then, seemed perhaps most vital just at the moment when it was poised on the brink of another crisis, the coming of the sound film, a crisis that would drastically alter the parameters of its discourse and the very ground of its debates. S E T T I N G the boundaries of a space, the endpoints of a period, obviously has something arbitrary about it. The reasons for beginning this volume in 1929 have already been given in the previous volume and are suggested above. The sound film "revolution" imposed a major transformation on the

PREFACE

French film industry, one that altered the material bases of film production and exhibition and, in turn, threatened to reorder the very terms of discourse on the cinema. As a consequence, certain prominent voices and modes of discourse suddenly either waned in influence or else fell silent, and critics such as Moussinac openly proclaimed "the death of the avantgarde." Beginning in 1929, of course, has the advantage of restricting all the texts selected here to those concerned exclusively with the sound cinema. But it also allows the book to focus initially on a series of polemical debates—especially between Clair and Pagnol—over the nature and function of sound film as distinct from silent film and on the various efforts to establish some kind of continuity between the two. The reasons for ending in 1939 are no less persuasive. The outbreak of war with Germany, just as it had twenty-five years before, curtailed most French film production for a time and hence most writing on the cinema.20 The ensuing defeat and occupation—and the consequent silencing or exiling of some of the most significant French writers—served to certify a process already well under way with the country's political shift to the right in 1938-1939. Although it would be incorrect to say that little of substance was published during the war, what did get published was more circumscribed and circulated less widely.21 And by 1945, the now familiar essays of Andre Bazin, which attempted to break with the past yet quite often ended up unconsciously repeating it, were beginning to emerge into prominence. Within the boundaries of this decade, however, the contours of French political and cultural discourse suggest a further demarcation whose division happens to parallel those of the previous decades, for the period of 1934—1935 was strongly marked by economic and political changes. The Depression finally culminated, in 1934, in bankruptcy for the some of the largest French film production companies and compelled the attention of several government-sponsored inquiries into what might salvage and restore the industry. At the same time, the violent February 1934 demonstrations in Paris polarized French society and led to the foundation of a National Front coordinating the various rightist leagues in France and then to a Rassemblement populaire coalition of numerous leftist groups that eventually turned into the Popular Front government. And the emergence of the Popular Front introduced a degree of political and ideological engagement into French discourse on the cinema that went beyond anything that had occurred before. In one sense, such a two-part periodization schema imposes a "natural" grid of order onto the discursive flow of French writing on the cinema in the 1930s. In another, more important sense, however, it merely provides an arbitrary set of neatly symmetrical, manageable units with which to "bite into" or disrupt that discursive flow and the conceptual clusters of thinking that circulate throughout. "A history, like a society, is xviii

PREFACE

a continuum that historians and sociologists compulsively violate and tear up into periods and categories," Regis Debray writes, "[after all] if it were not broken up, the continuum would in effect be unintelligible." 22 For, theoretical work on certain issues such as "realism" and "mythic consciousness" in the cinema as well as practical concerns about the reorganization of the French film industry and the construction of socially committed documentaries carried over from one period to the other. Yet the discourse of the late 1930s almost has to be differentiated from that of the early 1930s, if only because the social changes that confronted each period were different. And the later economic and political changes proved far more urgent and demanding than did the earlier technological change from silent to sound film. that comprise this book both include introductions that act as chapters in an ongoing "critical history"—beginning with French Film Theory and Criticism, 1907—1929—followed by complementary anthologies of texts in translation. Each introduction is modeled on the same format, with "local" variations to meet the demands of its particular period of reference. First, I offer a sketch of the public forum or sphere in which French film theory and criticism was articulated—surveying the important film journals, literary and cultural journals, newspapers, and books that devoted attention to the cinema. Next, I single out some of the discursive and non-discursive practices and institutions that at the time significantly intersected with the discourse of French film theory and criticism. Then I take up what seem to be the central concepts, problems or questions, and aesthetic positions of the period's writing on the cinema, analyzing their articulation and interpenetration across key texts as well as suggesting ways to question the distinctions and dichotomies that underlie them. Lastly, I make connections between features of these positions or theories and certain prior and contemporaneous aesthetic principles and concepts in the other arts. And I draw some parallels or points of resemblance to later French film theory and criticism—specifically, to the writings of Andre Bazin and to some of the more recent work of the 1970s and 1980s. T H E TWO S E C T I O N S

The choice of texts for each section follows certain principles. Generally, I have sought to select texts that best represent or put in play the significant voices, position, and issues of that particular period. This means that not all texts are equally articulate, coherent, and easily comprehensible; and some may seem maddeningly incoherent or contradictory, but such incoherence is not without its significance. Given the restrictions of length or space, I have tended to amass a large number of shorter documents rather than to privilege a few longer texts that might be taken as a "canon" or a xix

PREFACE

set of monuments and thus skew one's sense of the range and diversity of French writing. On the one hand, a good deal has had to be excluded in choosing excerpts from the few important books on the cinema;23 moreover, material that I considered repetitious or irrelevant has been cut from some of the individual essays (and these cuts are clearly marked by ellipses). Also excluded have been some texts that are sufficiently well known and readily available—such as Bardeche and Brasillach's The History of Motion Pictures (Norton, 1938)—as well as those that, though polished and comprehensive, merely reiterate what was said aptly and clearly enough long before. On the other hand, I have included clusters of reviews devoted to influential or controversial films—for example, L'Age d'or (1930), Les Croix de bois (1932), Les Bas-Fonds (1936), La Marseillaise (1938), Quai des brumes

(1938), La Bete humaine (1938), and La Regie du jeu (1939)—not only because they particularize some of the major debates of a period but also because much of the best French writing was done in response to specific films and because, by the late 1930s, the films that attracted the most attention tended to be Jean Renoir's. Finally, the texts are arranged, with a few exceptions, chronologically rather than thematically or according to author.24 This allows the reader literally to follow the historical progression of this discourse through the decade; but, more importantly, it allows for some thinking different from my own. The reader can draw his or her own connections and relations among these texts and, therefore, formulate a reading or interpretation that may deviate from that which I lay out in the introductions. In the end, of course, my own writing and selecting are guided by a set of interests and aims. Despite an insistence on the multiplicity of this discourse, I tend to focus on the development of French film theory and criticism of the 1930s within the framework of discourse modes that position the cinema as (1) a medium of information and education or social persuasion, (2) a form of popular spectacle or mass entertainment, and (3) a new form and language of art. Admittedly, the latter two discourse modes receive greater attention in this book. Concentrating on these two, however, does allow me to relate the cinema to broader cultural concerns in France and especially to analyze the emergent patterns of an autonomous film aesthetics. Yet if my thinking remains partially bound to a tradition that privileges the aesthetic, I trust that I also conceive and analyze the subject of the aesthetic as a cultural and ideological practice within the context of a larger cultural history. And I hope that I have halfway succeeded in picking up and untangling, as Walter Benjamin would say, some of the lost "threads that represent the weft of the past as it feeds into the warp of the present."25 May the method and format of this book offer a model for others doing research on related bodies of film theory and criticism. For here the

PREFACE writing of history is accompanied by the unearthing of something close to an archive, which—through further sifting, interrogation, and analysis— may well contain the seeds of that history's rewriting. 1. John W. Martin, The Golden Age of French Cinema, 1929—1939 (Boston: Twayne, 1983). Martin draws heavily on Francois Courtade, Les Maledictions du cinema fran^ais: Une histoire du cinema fran^aisparlant, 1928-19-/8 (Paris: Alain Moreau, 1978). 2. On Renoir, see Leo Braudy, Jean Renoir: The World of His Films (New York: Doubleday, 1972); Andre Bazin,y&?» Renoir, trans. W. W. Halsey II and William H. Simon (New York: Dell, 1973); Raymond Durgnat, Jean Renoir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); Alexander Sesonske, Jean Renoir: The French Films, 1924—1939 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); Michel Marie, "The Poacher's Aged Mother: On Speech in La Chienne," Yale French Studies, 60 (1980), 219—32; and Christopher Faulkner, TheSocial Cinema of Jean Renoir (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). On Clair, see Catherine de la Roche, Rene Clair: An Index (London: British Film Institute, 1958); Claudia Gorbman, "Clair's Sound Hierarchy and the Creation of Auditory Space," Purdue Film Studies Annual (1976), 113—23; Lucy Fischer, "Rene Clair, he Million, and the Coming of Sound," Cinema Journal 16 (Spring 1977), 34—50; and Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 224-31. For Vigo, see P. E. Salles Gomes, Jean Vigo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); John M. Smith, Jean Vigo (New York: Praeger, 1972); and Dudley Andrew, "The Fever of an Infectious Film: L'Atalante and the Aesthetics of Spontaneity," Film in the Aura of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 59-77. 3. See, for instance, J. H. Matthews, Surrealism and Film (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971), 92—105; Allen Thihier, The Cinematic Muse: Critical Studies in the History of French Cinema (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1979), 49—62, 113—28; Steven Kovacs, From Enchantment to Rage: The Story of Surrealist Cinema (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1980), 210—35; Linda Williams, Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 106—50; Sandy Flitterman, "Nursery/Rhymes: Primal Scenes in La Maternelle," enclitic, 5.2/6.1 (Fall 1981/ Spring 1982), 98—110; and Inez Hedges, Languages of Revolt: Dada and Surrealist Literature andFilm (Durham: Duke University Press, 1983), 101—7. 4. See, for instance, Goffredo Fofi, "The Cinema of the Popular Front in France (1934— 1938)," Screen 13 (Winter 1972—1973), 16—37; Elizabeth Grottle Strebel, "French Social Cinema and the Popular Front," Journal of Contemporary History 12 (1977), 507—11; Strebel, "Renoir and the Popular Front," Sight and'Sound 49 (Winter 1979-1980), 36—41; and Dudley Andrew, "Poetic Realism," Rediscovering French Film, ed. Mary Lea Bandy (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1983), 115—19. 5. Ginette Vincendeau, "French Cinema in the 1930s: Social Text and Context of a Popular Entertainment Medium" Dissertation (University of East Anglia, 1985); Vincendeau, "Community, Nostalgia and the Spectacle of Masculinity—Jean Gabin," Screen 26 (November—December 1985), 18—38; and Vincendeau, "The Popular Cinema of the Popular Front," La Vie est a nous: French Cinema of the Popular Front, 1935—1938, ed. Ginette Vincendeau and Keith Reader (London: British Film Institute, 1986), 73—102. See, also, Michele Lagny, Marie-Claire Ropars, and Pierre Sorlin, "Analyse filmique d'un ensemble extensible: Les films frangais des annees 30," Theorie du Film, ed. J. Aumont and J. L. Leutrat (Paris: Albatros, 1980), 132—64; and Lagny, Ropars, and Sorlin, Generique des Annees 30 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1986). 6. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 12—13, 134—35. In his fine biography of Bazin, Andrew mentions only Roger Leenhardt at

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PREFACE Esprit as having any influence on his "formative years"—Andrew, Andre Bazin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 30-33. 7. See, especially, Vincendeau and Reader, La Vie est a nous, and Genevieve GuillaumeGrimaud, Le Cinema du Front Populaire (Paris: Lherminier, 1986). 8. See the list of translations in the Acknowledgments. 9. Maurice Bardeche and Robert Brasillach, The History of Motion Pictures, trans, and ed. Iris Barry (New York: Norton, 1938). 10. Robert Chazal, Marcel Cane (Paris: Seghers, 1965), 87—103; Barthelemy Amengual, Rene Clair (Paris: Seghers, 1969), 101-19; Rene Clair, Cinema Yesterday and Today, trans. Stanley Appelbaum (New York: Dover, 1971); Charles Ford, Jacques Feyder (Paris: Seghers, 1973), 95-105; Jean Renoir, Ecrits, 1926-1971 (Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1974); Jean Epstein, Ecrits sur le cinema, vol. 1 (Paris: Seghers, 1974); Claude Beylie, Marcel Pagnol (Paris: Seghers, 1974), and Jean Vigo, Oeuvre de Cinema (Paris: Lherminier/La Cinematheque FranC.aise, 1985). 11. Georges Sadoul, Ecrits: Chroniques du cinema francais, 1936-1967, ed. Bernard Eisenschitz (Paris: Union generale d'editions, 1979); Philippe Soupault, Ecrits de cinema, 1918— 1931, ed. Odette and Alain Virmaux (Paris: Plon, 1979); Roger Leenhardt, Ecrits (Paris: Cahiers du cinema, 1985). 12. The only French anthologies of early film theory and criticism have long been out of print: Marcel L'Herbier, Intelligence du cinematographe (Paris: Correa, 1946); and Marcel Lapierre, Anthologie du cinema (Paris: La Nouvelle Edition, 1946). 13. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Foucault, "Nietzsche, Geneology, History," Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139-64; Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); and Guiliana Bruno, "Towards a Theorization of Film History," Iris 2.2 (1984), 41—55. I also borrow several terms later in this paragraph from Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," trans. Ben Brewster in Lenin and Philosophy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 127-86, as well as from several essays on Althusser—Michael Gordy, "Reading Althusser: Time and the Social Whole," History andTheory 22.1 (1983), 1—21, and Stuart Hall, "Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debate," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 2 (June 1985), 91—114. 14. Alice Yaeger Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 42. 15. Carol Lasser, "Interview: Linda Gordon," Visions of History, ed. MARHO (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 77. See, also, Rob Harding and Judy Coffin, "Interview: Natalie Zemon Davis," Visions of History, 113—14. 16. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 186. 17. Andrew, The Major Film Theories, 6—8. 18. Richard Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 120—21. 19. The critical use of the term flaneur comes originally from Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, trans. Harry Zohn (London: New Left Books, 1973), 35-66. 20. For an authoritative analysis of French filmmaking during World War II, see Evelyn Ehrlich, Cinema of Paradox: French Filmmaking Under the German Occupation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 21. An exception is Andre Malraux's "Esquisse d'une psychologie du cinema," Verve (1941), reprinted in L'Herbier, Intelligence du cinematographe, 372—84. See, also, several es-

xxii

PREFACE says written by Andre Bazin for L'Echo des etudiants, in 1943 and 1944—for instance, "Let's Rediscover the Cinema!" "For a Realist Aesthetic," "Toward a Cinematic Criticism," and "On Realism," trans. Stanley Hochman in Andre Bazin, French Cinema of the Occupation and Resistance: The Birth of a Critical Aesthetic (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981), 25-28, 3 5 37. 5 3 - 6 5 . and 70-72. 22. Regis Debray, Teachers, 'Writers, Celebrities: The Intellectuals of Modern France, trans. David Macey (London: New Left Books, 1981), 39. 23. Georges Altman, Ca, c'est du cinema (Paris: Les Revues, 1931). Le Role intellectuel du cinema (Paris: Institut International de Cooperation Intellectuelle, 1937). 24. There are three exceptions to a strictly chronological arrangement of texts. First, Jean Vigo's speech, introducing A Propos de Nice at the Vieux-Colombier cinema (14 June 1930), is placed after Rene Clair's essay, "Film Authors Don't Need You," Pour Vous (3 July 1930), so that the latter responds directly to Marcel Pagnol's "The Talkie Offers the Writer New Resources," LeJournal (3 May 1930). Second, Georges Altman's attack on the censorship of Bunuel's L'Age d'or, excerpted from Ca, c'est du cinema (1931), is advanced to the point where it follows Jean-Paul Dreyfus's analysis of the same film, from ha Revue du cinema (December 1930). Finally, Valery Jahier's review of Pagnol's Angele, from Esprit (December 1934), is placed at the end of the 1929—1934 section, even though it was published shortly after two other Jahier essays from 1934 (which are placed at the beginning of the 1934-1939 section), so that the pieces dealing exclusively with Pagnol all fall within the first half of the book. 25. Walter Benjamin, One Way Street and Other Writings, trans. Edmond Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London: New Left Books, 1979), 362, quoted in Terry Eagleton, Walter Benjamin or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (London: Verso, 1981), 57. Note: Were it possible to revise this volume extensively, I would add to the selected texts several essays that dealt with noncanonical popular films, address Ginette Vincendeau's suggestion that I take more account of the gender bias of French writing on film during the period, and reword some of my translations for greater accuracy and felicity. For this paperback edition, however, no changes have been made. Richard Abel January 1993

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Acknowledgments

T

HIS BOOK —and its companion volume, French Film Theory and Criticism, 1907—1929—originally was to have been written jointly by myself and Stuart Liebman. In fact, it was Stuart who initially conceived the project some six years ago and who inspired my own strong commitment to its realization. Unfortunately, by the end of the first year of research and writing, a number of unforeseen difficulties forced him to abandon his work on the project, and I determined to carry on with it alone. For having been able to see this book to completion, however, I owe an enormous debt to Stuart, for he has acted as a steadfast, enthusiastic supporter of the project throughout these past several years. He has closely read and critiqued each of the introductory essays and corrected some of my translation efforts. The finished book, of course, is quite different from what it would have been, had Stuart done much of the writing himself. But I trust that a good deal of its initial purpose and design remain and that, as it now exists, the book will prove just as valuable as the one we planned together, in part because it has often been addressed to him. I am also indebted to a number of other colleagues for reading the manuscript at various stages. Dudley Andrew and Kristin Thompson provided thorough, knowledgeable assessments of the entire manuscript, and I have incorporated their specific emendations as well as many of their helpful ideas. Early on, Jonathan Buchsbaum read both introductory essays and made a number of corrections and useful suggestions, based on his extensive research on leftist French films of the 1930s; and toward the end, Ginette Vincendeau graciously did likewise and then allowed me to examine her invaluable dissertation on 1930s French cinema. Bernard Eisenschitz and Lenny Borger kindly opened their personal archives to my perusal and helped direct or answer many inquiries. Others who have offered assistance at one time or another include Marie Epstein, Glenn Myrent, Jacques Aumont, Michel Marie, Leila Rahaman, Gerard Troussier, Philippe d'Hugue, Claudia Gorbman, Janet Altman, and Marie-Claire Lorrain of the Bureau d'Accueil des Professeurs d'Universites Etrangeres in Paris. A good number of archives have been essential to this project—several different departments of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris,_ especially the Departement des Arts du Spectacle de l'Arsenal (thanks to Emmanuelie Toulet), the Departement des Imprimes, the Departement des Periodiques, and the Annex at Versailles; the Bibliotheque d'IDHEC/Cinema-

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS theque frangaise (thanks to Noelle Giret) and the personal libraries of Bernard Eisenschitz. Lenny Borger, and Gerard Troussier in Paris; the libraries of the Museum of Modern Art and the Lincoln Center in New York as well as that of the University of Iowa; and the Inter-Library Loan Services of Cowles Library at Drake University. Claudia Gorbman has contributed excellent original translations of selected texts for the anthology sections of the book. A half-dozen translations have been published before: their original sources are acknowledged below, and the name of the translator accompanies each of these reprintings in the body of the book. The remaining translations are my own and render the original texts, I trust, with sufficient accuracy and clarity—for which I am indebted to Harrap's New Standard'French and English Dictionary (1972). At Princeton University Press, I am once again extremely grateful for Joanna Hitchcock's gracious encouragement and enthusiastic support for the manuscript, even as it grew inexorably into "another big book." And Charles Ault's meticulous copyediting has corrected a good number of minor and not-so-minor infelicities in the original manuscript and smoothed the relationship between the introductory essays and the selected texts. This project was initiated with a summer grant from the Drake University Research Council (1981). During much of the research and writing, I was fortunate to have the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1983-1984). A much-appreciated American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (1986) and a sabbatical leave from Drake University then enabled me to complete the book, while I was working on the research and initial writing stage of a further project on early French cinema. Finally, my deepest appreciation once more goes to the woman who has consistently inspired me throughout the period of this project, who has read and commented on every version of the manuscript—a superb writer and scholar of Shakespeare in her own right—my best reader and collaborator, Barbara Hodgdon. TRANSLATIONS

that previously have appeared elsewhere include:

Antonin Artaud, "The Premature Old Age of the Cinema," Selected Writings, ed. Susan Sontag (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976), 311—14. Rene Clair, "Film Authors Don't Need You," Cinema Yesterday and Today, ed. R. C. Dale (New York: Dover, 1972), 153-57. Jean Cocteau, "Postscript: The Blood of a Poet." Two Screenplays (New York: Grossman, 1969), 60—67. xxvi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Jacques Feyder, "The Possibilities of a Broadened Art," in Rediscovering French Film, ed. Mary Lea Bandy (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1983), 55. Jean Levy, "Concerning King Kong," in The Shadow and Its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on the Cinema, ed. Paul Hammond (London: British Film Institute, 1978), 105-8. Jean Vigo, "Toward a Social Cinema," Millennium, 1 (1977), 21-24.

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French Film Theory and Criticism

PART

ONE

1929-1934

From an artistic point of view, the talkie offers the writer quite different and, in some cases, marvelously original resources. . . . For the first time, dramatic authors will be able to achieve works which neither Moliere, nor Racine, nor Shakespeare had the means even to attempt. Marcel Pagnol, 1930 The talking picture will survive only if the formula suitable to it is found, only if it can break loose from the influence of the theater and fiction, only if people make of it something other than an art of imitation. Rene Clair, 1930 We count ourselves among those who are ashamed that the cinema— which, as a young art and a modern means of expression, is best suited to represent our era—is satisfied with fairy tales, banal anecdotes, and hackneyed vaudevilles, to the exclusion of subjects which would genuinely, lastingly, expand and resonate in our hearts and minds. . . . Individual conflicts; dramas of alcohol, passion, or friendship {of course]; hut phenomena of a collective order, never!

Marcel Carne, 1932

In the present period of transition—the period of the sound film and talkie—we cannot envision the possible organization—on the technical level, of course—of an undertaking that would correspond to what had been operating—whether good or bad, at least it was operating—in the period of the silent film: the so-called avant-garde cinema. Leon Moussinac, 1933

The Transition to Sound

T

HE PUBLIC forum for French writing on the cinema underwent a significant change in the early 1930s, a change that differed a good deal from those that had marked previous periods. Here the sound film "revolution," which altered the material bases (economic, technological) of film production and exhibition produced a major shift of ground. As a spectacle, just as it had before the Great War, the French cinema became more closely aligned with the theater and music hall or cabaret—for instance, writers, performers, and other personnel increasingly crossed back and forth between stage and studio; and cinema programs now often included stage performances by popular vaudeville entertainers.1 As an industry, it became even more subject to financial crises, as the Depresssion began to take its toll, so that, by 1934, some of the largest French film production companies—Pathe-Natan, Gaumont-Franco-Film-Aubert (GFFA), Jacques Haik, Adolphe Osso—either had collapsed into, or were close to, bankruptcy.2 Independent film production and distribution were cut back sharply, which forced certain formerly prominent voices and discourses into near silence and led to what Leon Moussinac and others called "the death of the avant-garde." Moreover, the rise of fascism in Western Europe, together with a growing interest in communism or Marxism, inspired by the apparent model provided by the Soviet Union, produced a further polarizing shift in the political situation, which increasingly divided French writers into ideological camps. Within the context of these changes, no one particular voice or discourse on the cinema emerged to dominate the period—although the debate over "canned theater" between Rene Clair and Marcel Pagnol perhaps came closest. Instead, more often than not, French film theory and criticism now hastened to catch up with rather than direct actual film practice.

THE PUBLIC FORUM The popular and specialized press continued to provide the primary forum for discussion about the cinema, but that forum depended more heavily than before on the film industry and its alliances with the newspaper consortia. The rapid development and diffusion of the sound film led to even greater coverage of the cinema in the daily and weekly French press, although most offered little more than rewritten publicity releases and capsule reviews.3 Relatively few changes occurred, however, among the writ5

PART ONE 1929-1934 ers involved in producing that coverage. Emile Vuillermoz, Rene Jeanne, Jean Chataigner, Alexandre Arnoux, and J.L. Croze, for instance, all retained their film reviewing positions, respectively, at Le Temps, Le Petit Journal, Le Journal, L'lntransigeant, and Le Petit Parisien and Comoedia. One important exception came in the transformation of Paris-Soir, which Jean Prouvost took over in 1931 (he already controlled Paris-Midi) and soon returned to a center-left political position. Within just a couple of years, the circulation of Paris-Soir had reached and surpassed that of Le Petit Parisien (1.5 million); and its film reviewers, Paul Reboux (who also wrote for Paris-Midi) and Pierre Wolff, became probably the most influential critics in France. Another exception came in the growing number of right-wing daily papers—which now included Le Matin, Le Figaro (which absorbed L'Ami du peuple in 1933), and Le Jour (launched by Leon Bailby in late 1933)—and weekly magazines as well as their increasing circulation. Joining the ranks of Action frangaise (whose literary editorship young Robert Brasillach took over in 1932) and Candide were Horace de Carbuccia's Gringoire (launched in 1928), Pierre Gaxotte'sjesuispartout (first published by Artheme Fayard in 1930, and edited by Lucien Rebatet), and Librairie Plon's 1933.4 The political right now began to take on a more overtly fascist cast and to assert and even extend its influence by means of this sudden interest in the cinema, principally through Francois Vinneuil's review columns in Action frangaise andj